Sensitive materials which have excellent sharpness, graininess and color reproduction at high speed and which have good storage properties are desirable as silver halide color photographic photosensitive materials. Development inhibitor releasing compounds (DIR compounds) have been used in the past as a means of improving photographic performance in terms of sharpness, graininess and color reproduction, etc.
The dyes, which are formed from these compounds preferably have a hue which has little unwanted absorption from the point of view of color reproduction. Pyrazoloazole type compounds have been disclosed in JP-A-61-28947 and JP-A-62-24252 as magenta color forming compounds which have good color reproducing properties and which are chemically stable. (The term "JP-A" as used herein signifies an "unexamined published Japanese patent application.) However, when these compounds are used alone they are not satisfactory from the point of view of sharpness and graininess.
Furthermore, the use of tabular silver halide grains for which the ratio of the diameter and the thickness (i.e., the aspect ratio) is at least 8:1 has been proposed in JP-A-58-113934, for example, as a method of providing sensitive materials which have excellent sharpness and graininess with high speed.
However, when tabular silver halide grains are used, the interlayer effect which is important for improving picture quality is reduced and it has become clear that there is a worsening of color reproduction. The conjoint use of compounds which release diffusible development inhibitors with these tabular silver halide grains in order to overcome this weakness has been proposed in JP-A-59-129849 and JP-A-61-14635. However, the specific examples of magenta color forming DIR compounds disclosed in the above mentioned JP-A-59-129849 and JP-A-61-14635 are all 5-pyrazolone type compounds which are not always satisfactory for color reproduction. Moreover, the 5-pyrazolone type compounds have the further disadvantage that a marked increase in coloration occurs during storage, and especially during storage under conditions of high temperature and high humidity, after development processing.
Moreover, a technique for improving sharpness, graininess and color reproduction by using (i) compounds which cleave a development inhibitor via a reaction of a compound which has been cleaved after reaction with the oxidized form of the developing agent with another molecule of the developing agent and (ii) tabular silver halide grains has been disclosed in JP-A-63-19654. However, the storage stability of the sensitive material is inadequate with the magenta color forming compounds of that reference.